Things that started out very, very small and became HUGE

[Annie-Xmas]

I'm putting this into Cafe Society because I igure most of the replies will be entertainment related.

Obviously, #1 is The Simpsons. From a bumper on the Tracey Ulman show, a new show on a new, fledglig network to a cultural phenomenon. It doesn't start out smaller and get bigger than The Simpsons.

The Special Olympics. Eunice Kennedy Shiver started them in her back yard, amidst criticism that the retarded could not compete in games. Now global, and an extremely wonderful thing in terms of chnging people's perceptions of the handicapped.

Chocoloate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. Originally just a flavor in Ben & Jerry's first store, people would go to their other stores and when they were told it was only available at one store, drive miles to get it. Now everybody who makes ice cream has Cookie Dough.

[The Controvert]

Joss Whedon

[CalMeacham]

Chocoloate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.

For that matter, Chocolate Chip Cookies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_chip_cookie

[yojimbo]

Riverdance started as a once off 7 min performance during the interval of the Eurovision Song Contest that Ireland was hosting in 1994. I remember that night very well. It became quite big after that ;)

Here's the first performance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4M2hEXdnvs)

[RealityChuck]

Many recipes started out this way: one chef creating something that becomes popular. Examples include

Ranch Dressing -- originally the house dressing for a dude ranch in California. Now impossible to avoid.
Potato Chips -- invented by a piss-off chef named George Crum to get back at an overly demanding customer.
Caesar Salad -- attributed to chef Caesar Cardini in a single restaurant.

[Cuckoorex]

"Things that started out very, very small and became HUGE"

That's what SHE said!

[batsto]

All those Ernest movies---didn't they start out as a character in a Sprite commerical?

[Robot Arm]

From the studios (and customer service center) of Paragon Cable in Hopkins, Minnesota, to the hearts of geeks everywhere,...

Mystery Science Theater 3000

[Shoeless]

Star Trek. Roddenberry was barely able to get his "wagon train to the stars" idea on TV in the first place because it was so different than anything else out there. It barely survived it's second season, thanks to a letter-writing campaign from a core group of devoted fans, and was ultimately canceled after it's third season.

Then it went into reruns in syndication, and picked up an enormous number of fans (like myself) who never had the opportunity to see it in it's first run. A decade later, we had the first in a long string of Star Trek motion pictures, and the mid-80's saw the first of several new Star Trek-based TV series. Now we have the movie franchise reboot. Like the Simpsons mentioned in the OP, it started off barely on the radar and just mushroomed into something unbelievably huge.

[phreesh]

Seinfeld, Cheers, Family Guy. All barely survived their first season. Family Guy was actually cancelled.

Google, Facebook. Both spent a few years as niche sites. Now, both are ubiquitous.

It's a bit tough to limit, as everything HUGE was little at first.

[blondebear]

Sequoia trees.

[Zeldar]

All those Ernest movies---didn't they start out as a character in a Sprite commerical?

Jim Varney (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001815/) He chose Nashville rather than New York or Los Angeles as a place to pursue his acting career and, with advertising executive John R. Cherry III, turned "Ernest P. Worrell" into a cash cow, making commercials for clients ranging from soft drinks to food stores and, eventually, Disney. Even though Ernest's catchphrase "KnowhutImean?" became a national craze almost immediately, Jim worked in TV and film for more than a decade before his famous alter-ego hit the big screen in Ernest Goes to Camp (1987).

[Annie-Xmas]

Seinfeld, Cheers, Family Guy. All barely survived their first season. Family Guy was actually cancelled.

<snip>
It's a bit tough to limit, as everything HUGE was little at first.

I don't consider getting a series as staring out "very, very small." That is quite an accomplishment in itsdelf. As I mentioned in my OP, the Simpsons wasn't even a series.

[Zeldar]

The stories of entertainers who started small and have wound up HUGE would fill several threads, but I'd like to mention a TV shows that used to air late on Friday nights in this area (and I will assume was syndicated in other markets as well) called Soul Train with host Noble Blackwell. See this link for more details. (http://browneyedhandsomeman.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html)Stevie Wonder was a harmonica player along with acts like Good Rockin' Hoppy and Ironing Board Sam and was "Little Stevie" in those days of Fingertips. I can remember thinking as I watched him play and sing, "This little guy is going to be a star someday."

[Annie-Xmas]

Most stars struggle along the way. Very very few bit players end up the star.

On the other hand, a cantor named Dudu Fisher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudu_Fisher) with no prior stage experience, captured the role of Jean Valjean in Israel's Les Miz, and also did the role on the West End and Broadway.

[Don Draper]

Would those Geico cavemen count? They got bigger than they deserved to be.

I just happened to be re-reading Tom Wolfe's novel [b]the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test[b] which describes how a handful of west coast wing-nuts, led by an eccentric author, discovered the recreational uses of LSD. The 60s counterculture was originally small enough to fit into a school-bus!

[Jenaroph]

South Park started out as a 5 minute student film, which led to a $2000 commissioned video Christmas card, which led to the series, which led to Everybody Draw Muhammed Day.

[RealityChuck]

South Park started out as a video project and later an animated Christmas card about four minutes long.

[Lute Skywatcher]

All those Ernest movies---didn't they start out as a character in a Sprite commerical?A Beech Bend Amusement Park promo for an appearance by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_P._Worrell), according to wiki.

[Little Nemo]

Pixar. The company started out selling computer monitors for medical equipment. They designed some in-house animations to showcase the quality of the monitors. They found that people were talking more about the animations than they were about the equipment so they decided to form a department that would make promotional animations. This department obviously grew into bigger things.

I'm thinking by this point when they hold their annual board meetings, somebody has to remember to ask if they're still making medical monitors and if they sold any this year.

[phreesh]

The British 'Office' started off as a BBC assignment for co-creator Stephen Merchant.

The details are fuzzy, but I think it was some sort of work/school co-op program and he had to demonstrate the skills he had learned by making a short film. Ricky Gervaise, his buddy, starred as the 'crap boss' and the rest is history.

[Zeldar]

KFC has become the giant it has since I was in college. In those days it was a franchise that some restaurants would buy into as a feature to their menu. Within a few years KFC was big enough to appear in the background in Goldfinger in the Fort Knox area. That was not too long after they first started having their own shops.

Not that KFC is all that much different from other food outfits. Just an example of the phenomenon, more or less.

[Alpha Twit]

Something about the $7,000 worth of Magic: the Gathering cards I have in my garage suggests that they would qualify.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Not that KFC is all that much different from other food outfits.Starting one's business in one's kitchen is a bit unusual for fast food, though. And let's not forget without KFC there'd be no Wendy's.

[palindromemordnilap]

The universe.

[panache45]

Most (all?) religions would qualify. Just a few believers who were very good at spreading the word.

[Tethered Kite]

Smiley Faces.

[SanVito]

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was rejected by all of twelve publishers that JK Rowling sent it to. She eventually got a small London publisher, who gave her the mighty advance of £1500 (c.$2-2.5k) and printed just 1000 copies, half of which were sent to libraries. The publisher also advised her to get a day job, as there was little money to be made in children's books.

Worth a bob or two, those 1000 copies.

[Clawdio]

I'd say that most bands fall into this category. It's interesting to find videos on youtube of one of your favorite bands playing a basement show to 20 people, when now they play to sold out clubs (or bigger) on their world tour.

My submission: the band Rise Against

[MPB in Salt Lake]

25 years back, who would have suspected that bottled water would become a 17 trillion dollar per-year industry in the USA alone???

[Thudlow Boink]

The Muppets?

[Lute Skywatcher]

The Muppets?At least Kermit. Started out on a local Washington, DC commercial.

Ronald McDonald also started as a local DC commerical icon, with a very different look from today.

Which brings to mind Bozo the Clown. Started with one guy at Capitol Records in '46, then a chidren's TV host in Memphis in '55. 27 different markets had licensed their own Bozo during his peak in the late-60s/early-70s, with the main one being portrayed by Bob Bell on WGN.

[MissTake]

Hello Kitty paraphernalia went from being available only in upscale department stores and specialty shops to being friggin' everywhere, including on waffle irons.

[WordMan]

What about incidental characters that become cultural icons - like Fonzie from Happy Days or Urkel from Family Matters? Both, I think, were meant to be short-lived characters and instead because huge. Well, not Simpsons or Harry Potter huge, but pretty darn big...

[Kamino Neko]

At least Kermit. Started out on a local Washington, DC commercial.

Not quite.

Kermit started as a character on Sam and Friends, a kid's show. Although it WAS local to DC.

I have seen people mistake Wilkins (http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Wilkins) for Kermit, and he IS a commercial character, though.

[jayjay]

Hello Kitty paraphernalia went from being available only in upscale department stores and specialty shops to being friggin' everywhere, including on waffle irons.

And vibrators.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Kermit started as a character on Sam and Friends, a kid's show. Although it WAS local to DC.Yes, of course.I have seen people mistake Wilkins (http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Wilkins) for Kermit, and he IS a commercial character, though.Wilkins had a voice very close to Kermit's (and Wontkins close to Rolf's).

[Tibby or Not Tibby]

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show). Generally panned by the mainstream press, the cult following didn’t start until 6 months after its US opening in September ‘75. Never pulled from its original release, it has the longest-running theatrical release in film history—playing some theaters for decades at a time.

[TBG]

I don't consider getting a series as staring out "very, very small." That is quite an accomplishment in itsdelf. As I mentioned in my OP, the Simpsons wasn't even a series.

Sorry, I gotta agree Cheers definitely fits the bill. Yes, they had a series, but no, not every series is "huge" and Cheers was anything but huge when it started, and by the time it went off the air, it was an event. Seinfeld, same way. Contrast with, say, Friends, that was pretty much a big hit right off the bat.

[ZipperJJ]

The role of Benjamin Linus in Lost started out small, and became a huge part of the plot pretty quickly:


In 2006, Emerson began a guest-star role playing Benjamin Linus on the serial drama television series Lost. This casting was a result of his work on The Practice because the Lost producers liked his work there and thought he was a good fit for the character they were developing.[5] Emerson was originally set to appear in a small number of episodes, then returned for the third season as a main cast member and eventually became the main antagonist of the program.

[MrDibble]

Aardman Animation started off with Morph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morph_%28character%29), a filler bit for Tony Hart's art show. Several Oscars and successful feature films and TV shows later...

still no Morph movie, though.

[Chefguy]

Domino's Pizza started out as a small, local business, then went public as a penny stock. Wish I had invested $10,000 in it those many years ago.

[Peremensoe]

not every series is "huge"

True, but no network television show is "very, very small."

[TriPolar]

Things that started out very, very small and became HUGE

The national debt

[Dewey Finn]

The role of Benjamin Linus in Lost started out small, and became a huge part of the plot pretty quickly:
For that matter, the character of Jack Shepard was originally supposed to die in the first episode.

[Sampiro]

Cabbage Patch dolls. Xavier Roberts grew up in the hills of north Georgia and noticed how much people went wild for traditional "hillbilly crafts" and experimented with modernizing an old fashioned "quilt doll" his grandmother used to make for the girls in the family. He and a partner handmade them (well, they used a sewing machine, but no mass production and no two identical) and sold them at craft shows, then when they began becoming regionally popular they hired others near Cleveland, Georgia to make them and sold them at a small shop there. Then they began sending them to privately owned shops on consignment.
When the fad still didn't die out they opened Babyland Hospital (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2074)which both helped streamline production and was great for marketing. Then Coleco bought the rights to produce them and of course it was huge; if you can remember Christmas 1982s you'll remember the stories of people doing everything from smashing car windows to trading sexual favors and family heirlooms to get one of those things.
Coleco's bankrupt now and Hasbro has taken over and they're nowhere near as big as their early '80s heyday, but they're still big business and Cleveland, Georgia still gets lots of visitors to the Bethlehem of the little buggers.

[Equipoise]

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259446/). In its opening weekend (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=16&p=.htm) it made $597,362, playing in 108 theaters, and was ranked #20.

By the start of its 10th week (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=25&p=.htm) it had only made a total of $14,541,150, playing in 444 theaters, and was ranked 14th (it had made it to 10 (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=20&p=.htm) one weekend in which everybody involved probably jumped for joy, before it slid back out of the Top 10). Since the budget was $5 million, that's not too bad a theatrical run. Most low-budget light romantic comedies, hell, most movies, would have been out of the theater and on their way to a decently healthy life on DVD.

But something very strange happened. Good word-of-mouth kept spreading from the Greek community to movie buffs to the general public, and the movie continued to play in the theaters, and play, and play, and play.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mybigfatgreekwedding.htm) ended up being in release for 51.4 weeks (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=mybigfatgreekwedding.htm), playing in 2,016 theaters at its height. Its final domestic total was $241,438,208, and the final worldwide total was $368,744,044.

All that, and it never was #1 at the box office. It made it to #2 for 3 weeks in a row.

Say what you will about the movie, but it was a rare phenomenon that still makes people, including me, and I loved the movie, shake their heads in awe and wonder.

By contrast with another movie that occurred to me, The Blair Witch Project (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blairwitchproject.htm) cost $60,000 to make, and made a worldwide total of $248,639,099, but it only played in the theaters in the US for 16 weeks (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=blairwitchproject.htm).

[pricciar]

Pixar. The company started out selling computer monitors for medical equipment. They designed some in-house animations to showcase the quality of the monitors. They found that people were talking more about the animations than they were about the equipment so they decided to form a department that would make promotional animations. This department obviously grew into bigger things.

I'm thinking by this point when they hold their annual board meetings, somebody has to remember to ask if they're still making medical monitors and if they sold any this year.

I didn't know Pixar sold hardware to be used in areas other than film making. That is really neat. They got their start as the computer graphics division of LucasFilm and then Lucas sold it off to Steve Jobs. That is when it became Pixar. I knew they sold hardware to Disney that they used to help automate their 2D animation process, neat to find out it had non show business applications, as well.

[Superhal]

Ultima: Richard Garriot sold the spiritual successor of Ultima (Aklabeth) in ziploc bags out of his garage.

[Oakminster]

Hulk Hogan. Went from being a member of a local band to becoming a cultural icon. Even non-wrestling fans know who he is.

[Superhal]

Michael Dell started selling computers out of his dorm room.

Quentin Tarantino dropped out of high school (as a 17 year old freshman) and worked in a video store.

Of course, Abe Lincoln grew up in a pile of dirt and did his school work on tree bark.

[Starving Artist]

Cirque du Soleil

Watergate

[Sampiro]

Of course, Abe Lincoln grew up in a pile of dirt and did his school work on tree bark.

And was born in a tiny log cabin that he built himself.

[Superhal]

And was born in a tiny log cabin that he built himself.

Nah those are lies, he invented Log Cabin syrup. With a handful of matches. And boot black.

[Indistinguishable]

Ultima: Richard Garriot sold the spiritual successor of Ultima (Aklabeth) in ziploc bags out of his garage.
Spiritual predecessor.

[bup]

Sorry, I gotta agree Cheers definitely fits the bill. Yes, they had a series, but no, not every series is "huge" and Cheers was anything but huge when it started, and by the time it went off the air, it was an event.Cheers was created by James Burrows (Mary Tyler Moore) and the Charles Brothers (writers and producers of the Bob Newhart Show and Taxi). It premiered on Thursday night on NBC, between Fame and Taxi.

For my contribution, I'll say How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, which went from being a stapled comic book passed among friends, to a 144-page picture book with advice, to a hit movie.

[jayjay]

The 2009 film Julie & Julia began as a blog by Julie Powell, about her attempt at cooking all 524 recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I'd say going from a blog to a major motion picture release is a pretty big jump.

[Omar Little]

The internet

[Zeldar]

Kudzu in the South.

[jayjay]

The universe.

[Cat Whisperer]

Isn't this little guy just adorable? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQOFRZ1wNLw) 2 billion screaming tweens apparently think so. Shit, Justin Bieber actually *can* sing. Hunh.

[Sampiro]

Kudzu in the South.

It seemed a good idea at the time.

No lie: I have actually seen kudzu grow, by which I mean it grows fast enough it is visible to the naked eye.
==========

Don't kangaroos emerge as lima bean sized joeys before they transfer to the pouch?

[Rrose Selavy]

1961. Martin Goodman, seeing the success of NPC's Justice League , asks Stan Lee to do a "superhero team" comic book.




Hewlett Packard started in a garage.

[LadyJane84]

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259446/). In its opening weekend (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=16&p=.htm) it made $597,362, playing in 108 theaters, and was ranked #20.

By the start of its 10th week (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=25&p=.htm) it had only made a total of $14,541,150, playing in 444 theaters, and was ranked 14th (it had made it to 10 (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=20&p=.htm) one weekend in which everybody involved probably jumped for joy, before it slid back out of the Top 10). Since the budget was $5 million, that's not too bad a theatrical run. Most low-budget light romantic comedies, hell, most movies, would have been out of the theater and on their way to a decently healthy life on DVD.

But something very strange happened. Good word-of-mouth kept spreading from the Greek community to movie buffs to the general public, and the movie continued to play in the theaters, and play, and play, and play.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mybigfatgreekwedding.htm) ended up being in release for 51.4 weeks (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=mybigfatgreekwedding.htm), playing in 2,016 theaters at its height. Its final domestic total was $241,438,208, and the final worldwide total was $368,744,044.

All that, and it never was #1 at the box office. It made it to #2 for 3 weeks in a row.

Say what you will about the movie, but it was a rare phenomenon that still makes people, including me, and I loved the movie, shake their heads in awe and wonder.
.

It's so funny you should mention this because in 1999 my father spent a few months working on "some shitty movie of the week" (his words) He's a set builder and spent time making a Dominion Supermarket look like a Greek restaurant. He finished the movie and then....nothing....So we forgot about it. Then a year later it came out. We thought it would just end up another small movie. It was pretty exciting to see something that we never expected to go anywhere to suddenly be everywhere!

[Bartman]

25 years back, who would have suspected that bottled water would become a 17 trillion dollar per-year industry in the USA alone???

Given that the total USA GDP is around $15 trillion, I can honestly say that 25 years ago I wouldn't have guessed that bottled water would account for 113% of the USA economy. :)

[norinew]

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show). Generally panned by the mainstream press, the cult following didn’t start until 6 months after its US opening in September ‘75. Never pulled from its original release, it has the longest-running theatrical release in film history—playing some theaters for decades at a time.
This is what I was going to mention. It was epic fail at first-release, then became a huge cult classic. I've even introduced my two older daughters (aged 23 and 19) to it.

[Annie-Xmas]

Oprah Winfredy. You're going to give an overweight black girl a talk show that is going to put Phil Donohue out of business? Yeah, right.

Peanuts. A simple comic strip becomes as huge a commodity as The Simpsons later would.

Doonesbury--started out as a strip in the Yale newspaper. A political cartoon strip that became an indusry.

CATS--You take a 40 year book of poems about CATS with no real plot. You have a cast and production crew with little to no track record. The show is financed by over 1,000 individual investors putting up a quarter, the composer mortgaging his estate for a quart, and the theatre delaying the other half. The show features one junkyard set and really cheesy costumes. It opens to tepid reviews...

...and ends up playing in every US state and almost every country, trasnslated into over twenty languages, winning a butt load of awards, and making the production crew world famous.

[Telcontar]

This is what I was going to mention. It was epic fail at first-release, then became a huge cult classic. I've even introduced my two older daughters (aged 23 and 19) to it. (Rocky Horror)

There are a handful of things that I enjoy that I would never directly introduce to my (hypothetical) children. This is one of them :P

"Oh, and here is your mother the semester she was tranny mom."

I just couldn't do it to them.

The internet
Damn you for beating me. It's plainly the best answer

[Dewey Finn]

Pixar. The company started out selling computer monitors for medical equipment. They designed some in-house animations to showcase the quality of the monitors. They found that people were talking more about the animations than they were about the equipment so they decided to form a department that would make promotional animations. This department obviously grew into bigger things.
This is the kind of thing I find fascinating; when a side product or afterthought becomes bigger than the rest of the enterprise and eventually no one even remembers the main product. I like to call such things the "tail that wags the dog" although that's perhaps not the correct use of the phrase.

Another example is Flickr, which originally was developed as a tool for a MMOG.

[cmkeller]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Started out as an independent, black-and-white comic book with a self-financed print run of 3,000 copies. It grew into a massively popular comic book franchise, with network cartoon shows, feature films (including a recent revival after the franchise's heyday in the early 90's) and the whole nine yards of merchandising.

[Annie-Xmas]

Avenue Q (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Q) wins the title of "most bizarre thing that started out really, really small and became huge". It was a workshop that later went off-Broadway. I saw one of the first previews and remember thinking "This is either going to flop miserably or be huge."

One of the best Tony show moments was, after Wicked had taken a bunch of awards and was rhe hands-on favorite to win the top Tony, the announced said "And the winner for best musical is....Avenue Q." There was a good 15 seconds of stunned slience, the Wicked team going :confused: and the Avenue Q team :eek:

The show has translated well, despite questions of whether it would play well outside of New York.

[guizot]

Seinfeld, Cheers, Family Guy. All barely survived their first season. Family Guy was actually cancelled.

Google, Facebook. Both spent a few years as niche sites. Now, both are ubiquitous.

It's a bit tough to limit, as everything HUGE was little at first.What we need is this thread: "Things that started out very, very HUGE and stayed very, very HUGE."

[norinew]

(Rocky Horror)

There are a handful of things that I enjoy that I would never directly introduce to my (hypothetical) children. This is one of them :P

"Oh, and here is your mother the semester she was tranny mom."

I just couldn't do it to them.



Not saying you should. But to be perfectly fair, my kids were pretty much adults when I introduced them to RHPS. My 10YO, however, doesn't know anything about it. Sometimes when she's around, Jango will start playing a RHPS song, and I'll just forward through it. I don't need her asking questions about "Mom, what's a 'transvestite'?" ;)

[pope_hentai]

your mother.

[TBG]

Ultima: Richard Garriot sold the spiritual successor of Ultima (Aklabeth) in ziploc bags out of his garage.

Precursor, not successor, and at the time, that's just how computer games were sold.

For that matter, the character of Jack Shepard was originally supposed to die in the first episode.

He was also supposed to be played by Michael Keaton.

True, but no network television show is "very, very small."

Tell that to the CW!

[bup]

I'll throw out the word "OK." It started as a joke - an 1830's version of l33t-speak - in a few papers in the northeast US. Now it transcends English - it's one of the most understood words on the planet.

[Annie-Xmas]

Saturfay Night Live. A little show on late night TV at a time when Variety shows where not popular became a vehicle for some hugely successful careers.

[Drain Bead]

Buffalo wings.

[Shirley Ujest]

You Tube.

[snoopygal]

Before he became ruler of the Soviet Union, Stalin spent many years not existing.

[jayjay]

Before he became ruler of the Soviet Union, Stalin spent many years not existing.

And afterward, many, many other people started not existing.

[pbbth]

Nokia started as a Finnish company that made galoshes and rain coats. Now they are a world famous cellular company.

[cmosdes]

The first NYC marathon had 127 runners and there was a $1 entry fee. I'm not sure if that is very, very small, but it seems pretty small to me when you compare it to what it is today.

[Enderw24]

Me.

Originally I was just two cells, all alone in a uterus. But look at me now!

[Rattlehead02]

Me.

Originally I was just two cells, all alone in a uterus. But look at me now!

As best as I can tell you're just some pixels on a monitor. More impressive than two cells to be sure, but lets not blow things out of proportion. :)

I think Microsoft counts. Bought DOS for about 40,000 grand and turned themselves into am industry leader.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Nokia started as a Finnish company that made galoshes and rain coats. Now they are a world famous cellular company.Nintendo started as a Japanese playing card company. 84 years later, they entered the video game market and by 1986 they had revolutionized arcade video games and home gaming consoles.

[tumbleddown]

For that matter, the character of Jack Shepard was originally supposed to die in the first episode.
As was the character of Carol Hathaway, in ER, but audiences liked her, so she stuck around, had the central romance of the show in its heyday and Julianna Margulies won an Emmy and six SAG awards for the role.

Also starting small and becoming huge: IKEA. It started as the one man business of a 17 year old in the middle of World War II. That 17 year old is now one of the (if not the absolute) richest people in the world, and there are IKEA stores in 25 nations.

[Annie-Xmas]

Bumping my own thread with a menton of Hannibal Lechter. The guy was a minor character in Red Dragon. It was only with Silence of the Lambs and especially the movie that he became a pop culture icon.

[njtt]

Basically, everything that ever became huge.

[olivesmarch4th]

Pixar. Originally a small studio that sold computer hardware, that allowed tiny bits of animation in order to move their product. Now... well, Pixar.

[furryman]

I'll throw out the word "OK." It started as a joke - an 1830's version of l33t-speak - in a few papers in the northeast US. Now it transcends English - it's one of the most understood words on the planet.

I bet the people who discovered the Jochimtaler mine never would have guessed that the name would eventually become the word for US money.

Robert Crumb sold the first issue of Zap out of a baby buggy while standing at the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

[Max Torque]

The world of comic books is full of stories like these. Couple of examples:

The Tick. A guy named Ben Edlund used to doodle The Tick in the margins of the monthly newsletter from New England Comics, a Massachusetts comic book warehouse. He became a sort of secondary mascot (the primary mascot was a hairy-armed apelike thing), and people liked him, so NEC let Edlund sketch out a three-page Tick story for the newsletter one month. It was popular enough that NEC decided to actually publish a full comic of The Tick on their own, the first comic book title they'd ever actually published. From the first limited print runs, the books ran through nine printings, spawned an animated TV series, a live-action TV series, various merchandising such as action figures and clothes, and even a couple of fast-food giveaways. Not too shabby for a little doodle.

The Goliath of them all has to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Self-published by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, funded by a tax refund and a loan from an uncle, the first issue of TMNT consisted of 3,000 black-and-white issues on cheap, oversized newsprint. Without coming right out and saying it, Eastman and Laird tied the Turtles' origin into the origin of well-known comic hero Daredevil. The ad they placed in the Comic Buyer's Guide paid off; ninjas were hot, and soon the Turtles were so popular, they inspired parody comics, few of which ran more than one issue. Some titles I remember were: Adolescent Radioactive Blackbelt Hamsters, Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos, Colossal Nuclear Samurai Bambino Snails, and (my favorite) Geriatric Gangrene Ju-Jitsu Gerbils. The Turtles shot past parody into animated TV shows (three series so far), blockbuster movies, toys, video games, party decor, clothes, and whatever else you can imagine. On the way, the Turtles transitioned from their gritty beginnings to a more kid-friendly version, bumping profits from the billions into the squillions.

[PunditLisa]

My daughters and I met Stephenie Meyer when she visited our local bookstore to promote her second book in the "Twilight" series.

[CrazyCatLady]

Hello Kitty paraphernalia went from being available only in upscale department stores and specialty shops to being friggin' everywhere, including on waffle irons.

And you know what? Kitty-shaped waffles are awful damn tasty. I do think the popcorn popper and the cereal dispenser are a bit much, though.

[JohnT]

Started small, became damned-near forgotten, now is considered the one of the (if not THE) greatest composer of all time.

ETA: What do I win? ;)

[jayjay]

And you know what? Kitty-shaped waffles are awful damn tasty. I do think the popcorn popper and the cereal dispenser are a bit much, though.

And the vibrator is way out in left field...